A Field Guide to the Planets

Recent robotic exploration provides evidence that Mars' barren landscape could be much more Earth-like in the past; whether Mars could be an Earth sibling; discoveries that will guide future exploration and scientific inquiry on the Red Planet.

Humanity's fascination with Mars is never-ending; learning how the similarities and differences between Earth and Mars result in Mars' planet-wide dust storms, migrating polar ice caps and 3.9-billion-year-old impact craters.

Even before the invention of telescopes, humans are familiar with various aspects of the Moon's surface; one can also explore complex lunar swirls, sinuous rilles and the lava tubes that hold promise as ideal locations for future lunar bases.

The Earth's moon is the largest moon in the solar system relative to its planet's size; the many ways in which this system affects the tides on Earth and on the Moon, the planet's rotation and revolution, tidal locking, and planetary stability.

Earth has a relatively thin atmosphere; without this layer, life would not evolve and thrive; the properties of each atmospheric layer; encountering specific ways to explore each layer as a springboard to exploring the rest of the solar system.

A theory proposed less than 70 years ago says that plate tectonics could be a main driver of life on Earth; exploring the movement of the planet's surface; the many ways in which a geologically active Earth sustains the biologically active planet.

The Venusian carbon dioxide atmosphere causes the hottest surface temperature in the solar system; the Earth and Venus contain about the same amount of carbon; the forces that result in the extreme atmospheric differences between these two planets.

Mercury is a planet of many solar system extremes; learning how these characteristics result in a planet where the Sun sometimes moves backward across the sky; a planet where water ice has been found at the poles.

Since 1962, robots have been exploring our solar system to help answer this most important question: Who are we? With fascinating data and images now in hand, explore this family album overview of our planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, Kuiper Belt objects, and long-period comets, and fly through some of our solar system’s most unique features!